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I show up at the Midway, after a bizarrely complex and trying day, late and hungry, to discover that Robotvoice are delayed in starting and the Maura Hennigan campaign event that took place here earlier has left a tray of free sandwiches! Score!
I'm probably not going to vote for her, but I'm not above eating her sandwiches.
So I get to see Robotvoice's whole set. The actual robot voice is somewhat sparingly used tonight; mostly Deb just screams her woefully incomprehensible lyrics in a piercing shriek that, while striking, is a natural product of the human vocal tract. What I do get a lot of is a good balance between Donna Parker's electronic noisemaking and the fierce, driving rhythm section. The former is nicely varied tonight and well entrained to the rhythm section's modulations; the latter is powerful, and the bassist seems kind of feisty tonight, playing with feedback more than he usually does and getting salacious with a weird gray mannequin that mysteriously occupies the stage. We do get a bit of the robot voice, a metallic and distorted effect on Deb's vocal, later in the set.
Boo Radley Bruises Badley, the solo rap/rock project of Luke from Night Rally, is to be a rap-only project this evening, with no singing and no guitar. Initially, though, it seems like it'll also have no rap, since there are fearsome technical difficulties with setup, resulting in the failure of most of the electronics and the replacement of all microphone signal with, well, duck noises. I wouldn't wish the technical difficulties on him, but the duck noises are endlessly entertaining. Eventually the problem is traced to his mixer, Donna Parker's mixer is subbed in (with a truly daunting amount of rewiring and reconfiguring), the duck noises are vanquished, and Boo's set can proceed, somewhat abridged since he's now running late. It's a pretty good set, with a couple of fairly strong new tracks, although once again I feel that the prerecorded stuff is cranked up too high, making it hard to catch the clever wordplay that is the point of this project for me.
Black Ice, from Oakland, also have horrible technical difficulties setting up. As Tia points out, theirs are vastly less entertaining, since there are no duck noises. Eventually, they get all the pieces that are supposed to make sounds making sounds, and all the pieces that aren't supposed to make sounds more or less silent. Then they start, and good heavens, it's Siouxsie and the Banshees. Now, I don't really have much of a problem with that; I've always kind of liked Siouxsie and the Banshees. But it's kind of weird and disconcerting how much like them these folks sound. The singer's voice and the heavy effects thereon, the instrumentation, and the songs themselves. It all hangs together, but it makes an odd fit for the rest of this bill, and it just makes it really hard to hear on its own terms, you know? They are very talented multi-instrumentalists: one person starts on violin and switches to bass, one starts on bass and switches to keyboard, and the guitarist and drummer change places for the last song. And the singer is a dynamic and energetic frontwoman, despite her complaints about oncoming illness, climbing on the furniture and invading (and dominating) the audience. If you'd like to see Sioxsie and the Banshees in a small club, hey, there's Black Ice!
Unfortunately, they sort of piss me off by playing a full set after taking all that time to get set up, leaving very little time for Neptune, the band I actually really want to see tonight. I know, the delay wasn't really their fault, and they're the touring band here, but still. Fortunately, Neptune decide to play anyway, even though it's after 1:00 and they have a shitload of stuff to set up. A tableful of homemade synthesizers that look like pure electronic chaos, in addition to the largely homemade drumkit and the absolutely gorgeous scrap-metal guitars and bass. Good thing they've just come back from tour; they get the whole thing set up and tuned in record time, and they have almost time for a full set. I think it's telling that the room is still pretty packed at 1:30 a.m. The music is tremendous, complicated and clamorous and noisy but also fleetingly melodic. The arty, evocative spoken vocals are still present, but there's a bit of singing making its way into a couple of songs, and it's a nice addition. The drummer looks really unhappy after each song ends, and I cannot figure out why, because they sound fantastic. (I later learn that he was just having trouble hearing anything onstage, but it sounds great from out here.) Standing right in front of the stage, I worry that I might be decapitated by the bass, which is swinging freely and looks like the right tool for the job, but I make it through the entire performance unbloodied. Technically, they probably shouldn't play quite as long as they do, and they sure shouldn't play an encore, but we get kind of carried away with the chanting and screaming, and since the bartender is as impressed as any of us, things are allowed to run a bit late.
